COMMENT: Sun Myung Moon has finally expired, 92 years too late. Head of what is generally viewed as a “cult,” Moon actually headed a powerful, international fascist organization with strong ties to the GOP, the Bush family, elements of the CIA.
The Moon organization appears to be an extension of the Japanese patriotic and ultra-nationalist societies–the vehicles for the elimination by assassination of opponents of Japanese fascism, imperialism and militarism. The societies thus became the primary vehicle for the elevation of fascism in Japan.
The recently rebroadcast FTR #291 [1] sets forth some of the most important considerations concerning the Unification Church. Listeners/Readers are emphatically encouraged to examine this show and the description for it at some length.
(FTR #428 [2] also contains discussion of the Japanese patriotic societies, as does AFA #7 [3].)
EXCERPT: The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed Messiah from South Korea who led the Unification Church, one of the most controversial religious movements to sweep America in the 1970s, has died. He was 92.
Moon, who had been hospitalized with pneumonia in August, died Monday at a hospital in Gapyeong, South Korea, church officials announced.
Although greeted as a Korean Billy Graham when he arrived in the United States four decades ago, Moon gradually emerged as a religious figure with quite different beliefs, whose movement was labeled a cult and whose followers were mocked as “Moonies.” At the height of his popularity, he claimed 5 million members worldwide, a figure that ex-members and other observers have called inflated. Those numbers are believed to have fallen into the thousands today.
Moon offered an unorthodox message that blended calls for world peace with an unusual interpretation of Christianity, strains of Confucianism and a strident anti-communism. He was famous for presiding over mass marriage ceremonies that highlighted Unification’s emphasis on traditional morality.
What also made Moon unusual was a multinational corporate vision that made him a millionaire many times over. He owned vast tracts of land in the U.S. and South America, as well as dozens of enterprises, including a ballet company, a university, a gun manufacturer, a seafood operation and several media organizations, most notably the conservative Washington Times newspaper. He also owned United Press International. . . .